Get thee behind me

I have been discouraged lately. I mean really discouraged. This is hard. There are so many times that I sit in a room full of my friends and family, and I feel like I'm all alone. Grace attends Sunday School, children's church, and a Pee Wee class at our church. This past week, we started Teaching and Training classes at church and so Grace now attends King's Kids during that hour. All of her teachers are amazing. They are people that I have looked up to through out my Christian life, and I am beyond thankful that she is being taught by each of them. However, I find myself wanting to just keep us at home. I feel as though she is a burden to her teachers. A hindrance to the class. She doesn't sit still. She doesn't seem to pay attention. She loves kids and playing with kids, but when she gets around too many at a time, she doesn't really know what to do. Her little brain lost all of it's inhibition receptors when she had the stroke, and so if she sees one child jump up and down, she automatically thinks it's time to do just that. Then her brain forgets to tell her to stop. So she continues to jump up and down. There is a good chance that she has TRUE attention deficit disorder, a REAL disease that has become so mainstreamed that it's almost a joke. So, I have options. I could put her on more drugs. I could do that.   I mean, really what's one more?

I could take her out of the room and spank her, every single time that the neurons and synapses in her brain don't fire exactly right, and she does something naughty. As a matter of fact, I have done just that for the past year. I can yell at her, more than I already do, and expect that to bring results. Her neurosurgeon has likened her brain to that of an Alzheimer's patient.Can you imagine pulling down your grandma's pants and spanking her when she forgets?  Well, that's basically what I have been doing to her for over a year. I'm not saying she doesn't ever deserve to be spanked...she has MANY times when she is willfully naughty. She also has many MORE times though when she just doesn't understand. Or even worse for her, she does understand, but her brain just can't make her feet sit still.

I guess I don't even know what the point of this post is. It's hard to walk into a room full of other kids and have your child be the one off in the corner, playing by herself. It's hard to go to church on Wednesday nights and know that she looks so forward to her PeeWee Club, yet I dread it. It's hard to paste a smile on my face and say hello to people after my daughter has been called "Dum Dum".

Well, I wrote all of that ^^^ this morning. I considered just completely deleting this post, but I took the time to write all of it, so obviously it needed to be said. For me. Since then, I've taken Gracie to her eye doctor appointment and had some one on one time with her. On the way home, we were listening to a CD with the song "Where He Leads, I'll Follow". She piped up from the back "Sweet are da promises, kind of like the Word" in her adorable voice. I asked her where she knows that song from ( she sang it in the car last night too), and she said she learned it at her church. We kept listening to it, me with tears streaming down my face.

"List to His loving words, “Come unto Me”;
Weary, heavy laden, there is sweet rest for thee;
Trust in His promises, faithful and sure;
Lean upon the Savior, and thy soul is secure."

I know the answer to my problem.  Doesn't make it any easier, but I do know the answer.